Illustrator Tutorial: Dynamic Burberry Text (Guest Post)

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Today we are going to go over Dynamic art, vector art that isn't destructive to the vector paths. Basically this keeps things like text editable. Why would you do this? Well for example, if your designing a post card that has variable data and is going out to 10,000 people and you want it so the receiver gets their name printed on the card, but you want it to look designed and not just plain tex, then you need Dynamic text. Kodak, Epson, and Cannon either offer or are working on printers that support Variable data and Dynamic text. Today we will look at designing it so the printers can re-type the text on the fly.

What We'll Be Creating

Illustrator Tutorial: Dynamic Burberry Text

We are going to be working on a Burberry theamed type. First you'll need to create the pattern. You could do a quick google image search and find the pattern. Here is a link to the file I created based on those images. Its daunting at first glance, but once you get your head wrapped around it, you can do some amazing stuff (examples are at the end of the tutorial). Ok lets get started.

Step 01

Open the .AI file in our trusty Illustrator and open up the swatches palette. Here you'll just drag and drop the vector pattern to create a patterned swatch.

Swatches palette

Step 02

Type out some text. Here i'm using the font Arno Pro with the Caption style set at 215.7 points.

Arimo Pro

Next open up your Appearance Pallet, this is where the magic happens.

Appearance

Step 03

Add a new fill and add the Burberry swatch to it.

Step-03a - Add a new Fill
Step 03b - Apply swatch

Next make sure your transform is set to Pattern Only.

Step 03c - Transform setting

Click in the Width dialog box then using your arrow key, press down till the pattern is scaled right with in the text.

Step 03d - adjusting pattern

Step 04

Add another fill, and fill it with the Cream/Off White swatch from the pallet.

Step 04a - adding a fill

Then move it below the patterned fill, by dragging it downward like you would a layer in photoshop.

Step 04b - rearanging layers

Select the that fill and add an Offset Path from the Effect menu.

step 04c - Adding Offset Path

Set your Off Set to 2 px.

step 04d - Offset Path setting

This makes this fill 2 pixels wider than the patterned fill. Its hard to see because the color is light.

Step 05

Now select Transform, again from the Effects menu

step 05a - Transfomr menu

Then set the Vertical Move to -0.5 px.

step 05b - Verticle Move setting

This bumps that fill down a tad.

Step 06

Now grab that fill in your Appearance Pallet and duplicate it by dragging it down to the New icon.

step 06 - new fill

Make a new swatch and use the colors: C=39 M=77 Y=44 K=70. Now apply it to the new fill.

step 06 - New Swatch

Again go to Effect -> Path -> Offset Path, and set it to 4 px.

step 06c - Offset Path settings

Next transform that fill with the Effect -> Distort & Transform -> Transform. Give it a -3.0 in the Vertical Move field.

step 06d - Transform settings

This is where you should be at:

End of step 06

Step 07

Now were going to give a little more depth showing some lighting effects.

Create a new fill and fill it with white, move it below the stroke.

Atep 07 - adding a fill

Open your Transparency Pallet and set the fill to Multiply.

step 07b - Changin Fill color mode to Multiply

Now apply a gradient to it.

step 07c - Adding a gradiant to it

Due to the lengthy tail in the lowercase “y” we are going to make this all caps. In your Character Pallet click the fly out in the top right and select “All Caps”.

step 07d - Changing tex to all caps

Grab the dark red swatch we created last and drop it on the right end of the gradient.

step 07e - Editing gradient

Set the gradient Mid Point Slider to 87%,

step 07e - gradient editing

and the White slider around 69%.

step 07e - gradient editing

Go to your Offset Path in the Effects menu again and set this gradient fill to 4 px.

step 07h - Offset Path setting

Here is what your appearance pallet should look like:

End of step 07

Step 08

Lets add a highlight now. Add yet another fill.

step 08a- Adding another fill

Apply the a gradient to it.

step 08b- Adding gradient

Set the first Slider to White at 6%,

step 08c

the Mid Point Slider to 64%

step 08d

and the last slide at 30% with a black fill.

step 08e

Next open your transparency pallet and set the Layer Mode to Soft Light.

step 08f - Chaning fill color mode to Soft Light

And there you have it a nice Burberry text that also has a sense of depth. Tweak each fill till you like it, then save the graphic style so you can use it later on other text.

End of step 08

Now take your text tool and click on the text and just start typing.

Editing the type

Imagine getting a post card in the mail with your first and last name printed like this! Pretty impressive. Oh and here are some examples of Dynamic editable type.

(Last tip: To save your style for later use, or to apply to other text, by opening your Graphic Styles pallet and and click on New Graphic Style.)Last Tip

About the Author:


Hello, my name is Gautch (Josh). I've been working in Illustrator since version 7 (pre-bounding box, and floating pallets) and in Photoshop since version 3, when we got layers and tabbed palettes. I’m a successful designer (for print, motion, and web) working out of Southern Oregon for an in house design department that does 75 to 115 ads a week. Yes you read that right, 115 per week.